The Trump administration came to the Supreme Court on Sunday morning, asking the justices to pause a ruling by a federal judge in Massachusetts that bars the government from implementing parts of a U.S. Postal Service rule on mail-in ballots. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the court that Friday’s order by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani “nullif[ies] the Postal Service’s efforts to address the risk that the federal mails will be used to perpetrate voter fraud—a particularly pernicious species of fraud that dilutes the votes of lawful voters, prevents election results from reflecting the will of the American people, and undermines ‘public confidence in the integrity of the electoral process.’”
Sunday’s filing was the third time in less than six weeks, and the second time since Thursday, that the Trump administration came to the Supreme Court seeking to clear the way to implement restrictions on mail-in voting. In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that directed federal agencies to take a series of steps on mail-in voting. The first provision instructs the Department of Homeland Security to create lists of the adult U.S. citizens in each state and to send those lists to states at least 60 days before a federal election. The second provision tells the U.S. attorney general to “prioritize the investigation and, as appropriate, the prosecution of State and local officials … who issue Federal ballots to individuals not eligible to vote in a Federal election.” And the third provision requires states to give the U.S. Postal Service a list of voters to whom the states intend to send mail ballots, and it prohibits the USPS from mailing ballots to voters who are not on the lists of “enrolled” voters that the USPS will create.
A group of 23 states, led by California, and the District of Columbia went to federal court in Boston to challenge the government’s implementation of the order. They argued that the executive order conflicts with provisions in the Constitution that give states the power to determine voter eligibility and to set the “Times, Places, and Manner” of holding congressional elections.
Talwani prohibited the federal government from implementing the challenged restrictions on or before Nov. 3, 2026, in the District of Columbia and the 23 challenging states.
After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit declined to pause Talwani’s order while the litigation continued, the Trump administration on July 27 asked the Supreme Court to step in – as did a group of 12 states, led by Alabama, that had joined the case on the Trump administration’s side.
Nearly a month later, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to begin implementing the executive order. In a 10-page, unsigned opinion, the majority wrote that it was too soon for courts to consider the states’ challenge because the order had not yet been carried out – and, as a result, the states have not suffered the kind of injury that would allow their lawsuit to proceed.
Shortly after the court’s ruling, Talwani lifted an injunction that she had issued in a separate challenge, brought by the League of Women Voters, to one provision of the executive order. But in an Aug. 27 decision, Talwani issued a temporary restraining order that blocked the Trump administration, for 14 days, from requiring states to comply with several provisions of the new Postal Service rule, such as ballot envelope design requirements and the submission of voter data into a USPS portal.
The Trump administration returned to the Supreme Court on Thursday, asking the justices to freeze Talwani’s order (and to issue an administrative stay, which puts the order on hold while they consider the government’s request).
On Friday, Talwani issued a preliminary injunction, which replaced her Aug. 27 temporary restraining order and barred the Trump administration from requiring states to comply with provisions of the rule indefinitely while the states’ challenge continues.
On Sunday, Sauer submitted a letter to Scott Harris, the clerk of the Supreme Court, withdrawing the Trump administration’s Sept. 3 application in light of Talwani’s new order granting a preliminary injunction.
The Trump administration on Sunday then also filed a new application, seeking to put Talwani’s Sept. 4 preliminary injunction on hold. Sauer wrote that the order is “materially identical to the temporary restraining order, both in its substantive scope and its minimal, conclusory reasoning.” Talwani’s “continuing prejudgment of the rule is baseless,” he contended, and its rationale is “simplistic.”
Sauer pushed back against suggestions “that the Postal Service is trying to federalize the rules for mail-in voting.” Instead, he said, “the Postal Service’s final rule imposes only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements for federal-election ballots sent via U.S. Mail.”
The new rule, Sauer continued, “is plainly constitutional. While the States have primary authority to regulate the manner of elections, they cannot choose to use the federal mails to carry out their elections but then insist that their election-related mail is somehow exempt from the Postal Service’s rulemaking authority, conferred by Congress, to regulate envelope design and addressee information.”
If Talwani’s order is not put on hold, Sauer said, the government will – as the Supreme Court has already recognized in earlier proceedings involving the rule – suffer permanent harm (a key factor in determining whether to award temporary relief) because the election is so soon. North Carolina has already started to mail out ballots, Alabama will do so on Sept. 9, and “at least five States” will do so the following week – all without being required to comply with the new rule. By contrast, Sauer contended, the states’ claims that complying with the rule will harm them are “overblown.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has initial responsibility for emergency appeals from Massachusetts, directed the challengers to file their response by 4 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, Sept. 9.
